advertisement

---

On Tuesday, Kansas City Southern’s cross-functional derailment and injury prevention committee met in Shreveport, La. to discuss safety trends, best practices and initiatives.

The committee is trying to improve employee training and testing to ensure rules compliance by providing thorough training for new hires, continuous training throughout an employee's career and efficiency testing.

Committee members also are analyzing supervisors’ role in improving safety. Currently, KCS requires managers with less than five years’ experience to enter a cross-functional mentoring program. Managers are paired with more experienced peers in the transportation, mechanical and engineering departments to learn what to look for in all operational areas to prevent derailments and injuries.

In addition, the railroad is cross-training senior trainmasters in different territories so the workers become more knowledgable of an entire division, and help identify operating trends and shortcomings.